Destiny 2's New Eververse Armor Sets Make Me Sad

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Destiny 2

Bungie

Yesterday, Destiny 2’s new Season of the Forge began a week ahead of the Black Armory content drop which Bungie revealed in detail yesterday. Everything about Black Armory looks pretty cool, and I’m excited for the year’s Annual Pass content to come as well.

I jumped into the game to start my pinnacle quests, about the only new thing you can really do for now, and swung by Eververse to check out the usual collection of items in the store. There are some neat ships and sparrows, some killer ornaments for weapons and armor. Stuff I definitely want.

Then I saw the armor sets.

Destiny’s desire to sell armor in Eververse has always been somewhat controversial, but for the most part, its armor sets have been relatively ugly so no one really made much fuss about them. This time around, however, not only do all three sets look pretty neat, when I realized what they were, they made me downright sad.

The Hunter cloak looked familiar, and then I checked out what other people were saying, and realized that yes, that’s Andal Brask’s cloak, the famed Hunter. The entire armor set is his armor, and the same is true for the others as well. The Titan set is Wei Ning. The Warlock Set is Ulan Tan, all three characters from Destiny lore, and famed examples of their respective classes.

This…bums me out.

Destiny 2

Bungie

Armor has always been a questionable choice for Eververse, as with new content we only get so many sets of armor, so locking one into Eververse feels weird. But here, doing these three sets which should have meaningful story significance is kind of lame, and I agree with the general sentiment that these should have been rewards for some sort of class quest in the coming content year, rather than something to be hunted for in Bright Engrams (“Etched” Engrams this season). Andal Brask’s cloak in particular has huge lore implications, as that’s meant to be something passed from Hunter to Hunter as a rite of passage. But here you can…buy it for Bright Dust. That feels wrong.

Another problem with sticking armor in Eververse is part collection itself, as you have to rely on RNG to get the piece you want, or wait endlessly for the store to sell it, but also getting rolls that are in any way relevant to you, now that armor has rolls.

I will be brave and admit that I spent about $40 on Etched Engrams yesterday. Hey, don’t give me crap, I’m doing it so you don’t have to! The point being, out of all those Engrams, which cost more than the entire Annual Pass itself, I got…two Andal Brask armor pieces for my Hunter.

Yes, I will likely assemble the set eventually, as you get at least 9 free engrams a week on your three characters, and I did end up with the full Eververse sets last time. But only one copy of each. Because this is not armor you’ll find in the wild, you can’t just keep getting say, Scatterhorn Gauntlet drops until you get the rolls you want. You’re lucky if you ever even see two copies of the same piece of armor per class, so you’re pretty much stuck with whatever drops. And as I’ve demonstrated, gambling for the 1% chance you’ll get that armor piece again and a 0.01% chance it will be the roll you want is literally impossible unless you’re dumping thousands of dollars into the game.

Destiny 2

Bungie

But this isn’t a “pay-to-win” issue, which some were worried about when Eververse was selling armor. Rather it sucks from a storytelling perspective, given how neat it would have been to find/earn these sets in-game with their respective classes, and because they’re in Eververse there’s a super low chance they’ll have rolls you’ll ever use anyway unless you’re crazy lucky with the 1-2 drops of a piece of gear you’ll get during the entire season.

I know that Bungie is struggling somewhat to monetize Destiny, but even as someone who does support Eververse by throwing down cash from time to time, I have to say that these armor sets are a huge bummer, and I hope they reconsider this concept in the future.